Drew Endy helped start the newest engineering major, bioengineering, at both MIT and Stanford. His research teams pioneered the redesign of genomes and invented the transcriptor, a simple DNA element that allows living cells to implement Boolean logic. In 2013, President Obama recognized Drew for his work with the BioBricks Foundation to bootstrap a free-to-use language for programming life. He has been working with designers, social scientists, and others to transcend the industrialization of nature, recently co-authoring “Synthetic Aesthetics,” published in 2014 by MIT Press. Drew is also a co-founder and director of Gen9, Inc., a DNA construction company.
Photo Credit: Leslie Williamson for Stanford Engineering
